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> I don't understand the real value in this. They take a bunch of BGA parts + passives and put the dies in a bigger BGA that approaches the same PCB area?

It's like DRY (don't repeat yourself) for embedded systems. This package wraps the common layout tasks of an embedded systems design in to an easy, pre-packaged module. The PCB designer no longer has to do the layout work of all of the DRAM and power-supply traces, which can consume a lot of time and effort when you're just trying to do a basic design.

> If someone has the manufacturing capability to put down one integrated BGA part, then they have the capability of putting down the DRAM and processors just the same as well as the 0201s or whatever passives to support it.

That's the other great thing about this package: The BGA pitch (distance between BGA balls) is a relatively large 1.27mm. This allows for the use of much cheaper PCB processes because the designer doesn't have to use very fine vias and traces to route in between the balls. For reference, many BGA packages these days have 0.8mm, 0.5mm, or even 0.4mm pitches and require more expensive PCB processes for the entire board just to place that one chip.

> Also, how many hackers are actually putting down BGAs like this when you can buy a properly routed, tested and assembled BeagleBone for so cheap? I know a few are, but they are the 0.1% perhaps? All the makers are rocking Arduinos and Raspberry Pis and can't even spell B-G-A.

Placing BGAs is quite easy for the hobbyist these days, especially now that hot-air stations can be had cheaply. You're right though, in that this product isn't targeted at the weekend DIYer. It's for people building boards who want a CPU but don't want to mess with tight PCB tolerances and all of the high-speed routing required. It also represents a very easy path toward manufacturing for those DIYers who do start with a BBB-based design and want to move to something they can mass produce and sell.

With this, they could drop a single, easy BGA package on their PCB and skip straight to doing design and layout only for the parts of their design that differ from every other embedded systems design (e.g. not the DRAM <-> CPU interface, not the power supply layout, and so on).

> I don't understand the real value in this. They take a bunch of BGA parts + passives and put the dies in a bigger BGA that approaches the same PCB area?

> (...)

> Only thing it seems to do is enable quicker prototyping by avoiding having to get things like the DDR memory traces correct. And a shorter BOM.

My guess is that this sort of bundling may help in terms of driver support, as it provides a very specific bundle of hardware components and features.

Perhaps someone knowledgeable on the subject can chime in on the subject.

Getting DDR right is huge. It also means I can place this part on a 2 or 4 layer PCB, which is way cheaper than the 8 layers I need for a typical DDR layout.